“‘This is Diana of the Ephesians!’ he cried aloud, and his voice echoed and re-echoed through the aisles and colonnades of the temple. Before the last sound of it died away, a terrific clap of thunder shook the temple. Frightened voices were heard on every side, and suddenly, from every direction, priests in gorgeous robes came rushing towards the idol. Dinocrates caught one glimpse of them as they snatched the burning lamps from the feet of the figure, and then everything went dark.
‘THIS IS DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS’
“In another moment, how he could not tell, he found himself in the open air, listening to a murmur which sounded like the soft rustling of leaves overhead. Slowly he opened his eyes, and looked round him in amazement. The great temple had vanished. He was lying under trees in a little glade, and there before him stood a simple altar of stones piled together, and behind it, in the hollow of a tree, he saw a little figure roughly carved. And then, with a cry of wonder, he remembered.
“This was the first altar to Diana, and here, as a tiny boy, he had laid poppies upon it! Scarcely had he seized that memory, when the altar melted away before his eyes, and out of the mist round the place where it had stood emerged a small temple. He remembered that, too. In another life he had planned it, and seen it built. He remembered the columns he had invented—those pillars of a new shape called later the Ionic columns. For a moment the temple stood there in the glade, gleaming in moonlight, and then it too disappeared.... In its place, rising out of the earthlike smoke which gradually took shape, was formed at last another, this time a mighty temple, covering the whole of what had once been the glade. He had built this one, also—in yet another life—hundreds of years later! And, as he gazed at its rows of shining columns, he saw that they were like the columns of the first small temple. To the building now before him—again hundreds of years later—he had come back as a little boy on the day when his hair was cut off by the priest. How well he recalled it! How well he remembered looking at the pillars with some faint memory stirring in his mind, yet with no idea that long, long before he had built them....
“He had come now to his present lifetime. This was the temple that was burnt down while he was quite a young man. In another moment what he expected happened. The building before him vanished, and magically, in its place, stood the new one, the last work of his hands.... Now at last he understood how, for hundreds of years, in many different lives and with long intervals between them, he had been making temples for Diana—for the true, beautiful Diana. And her worship and honour had been stolen from her by the hideous black monster now enthroned in this last and most magnificent temple!... Dinocrates was full of misery at the thought, and full also of confusion about what had recently happened. Had he really tried to set fire to the false goddess? Had he really held up the statue of the true one? What was real in all that was happening to him, and what was not? He felt wretched and afraid. Was he mad, or dreaming?
“Such a heavy drowsiness came over him that he was obliged to close his eyes, and sink down upon one of the marble benches in the outer courtyard of the temple where now he found himself standing.
“And then, though he could not lift his tired eyelids, he knew that some wonderful presence was near him. Sweet scents were in the air; faintly from far away he heard the music of a horn, and then a beautiful voice spoke close to his ear:
“‘Fear not, Dinocrates,’ he heard, ‘for thou hast ever been a worshipper of all the truth and beauty thou hast known. Thou hast striven to place me in a seat of honour, and thy work has not been in vain. The day will come when another god shall reign in that last temple, the work of thy hands—a merciful god who shall triumph over the false Diana worshipped by the Ephesians. And I, too, the Diana thou hast adored, shall be no more a goddess worshipped by men. But the thoughts I have given to men shall remain, and the beauty thou hast seen in me shall remain also. And because thou hast been my faithful worshipper I will give thee, as I have given thee once before, a happy passing from this to another life.’
“The voice ceased, and, smiling with perfect happiness, Dinocrates gave a long sigh, and then lay still.